#but she's also... kinda become a microcosm of my frustrations with p5

[letsplayballet]

so uh. this post didn't get a whole lot of attention but it did get just enough for me to start trying to write some other scenes. this piece is pretty different vibe-wise, and i'm pretty sure it's not done, but i'm tired of looking at it so!!

~*~

“Have I told you that my father was a cop?”

Akira stops, losing his mental grip on the rest of the sentence he’d been writing for his literature assignment for Kawakami. Glancing up from the paper, he sees Makoto sitting tense as a coiled spring on his perpetually dusty couch, knuckles white on her pen, staring through the textbook in front of her as if she could see into the café below their feet. If it weren’t for Morgana’s perked ears from where he’d been half asleep on the table, Akira could almost believe that she hadn’t said anything at all.

It had been a little strange, when Makoto had shown up hours early for their planned infiltration of Futaba’s palace. She’s his teammate, and he trusts her implicitly, is willing to put his life in her hands- if she’d shown up that morning asking him to go backpacking across China with her, he would only have asked if it could wait until after they’d dealt with Medjed. But despite all this, they haven’t had a lot of time to spend together individually, and Akira gets the sense that there’s still a lot he doesn’t know about her as Makoto, as opposed to Queen.

And she hadn’t asked to do anything drastic. Hadn’t asked anything at all, actually. Just stood in the entrance to Leblanc silently, exactly 15 minutes after opening, until Akira (remembering all I am is a burden to her, remembering the faintest gleam of guilty relief in her eyes when telling them I haven’t seen my sister in days) finishes brewing coffee for the both of them and just as silently brings her upstairs to his room.

They’ve been working on their summer homework for nearly an hour, quiet but not uncomfortably so. This is the first either of them has broken the silence, and it’s pretty clear that whatever is on Makoto’s mind has been weighing on her for a while.

Realizing she’s still sitting there, tense and unmoving, Akira clears his throat a little. “Once, I think? You said he’d worked the beat in Shinjuku.”

Makoto lets out a long, measured breath through her nose, and her jaw unclenches ever so slightly. It’s another few moments before she speaks again.

“He was. He was actually a really instrumental part of the Shinjuku Cleanup Operation.”

She stops again. Bites her lip. Her pen shifts slightly in her grasp.

“I… Growing up, I thought of him as a hero, you know? Idolized him, even. I didn’t know much about his job, not really, but between the few things he shared and what I would always see on shows, I definitely had this golden, untouchable image of what he did. Hunting down criminals, bringing justice to the world… I wanted so badly to be just like him.”

There’s a faint, fond wistfulness to her tone that makes Akira intensely grateful for her still-distant gaze, forcing his breathing to remain calm and even as he gently sets his own pen down and hides his shaking hands in his lap. For a moment he’s overwhelmed –

that dark, ugly fury rising up in him, blinding, screaming see, you can’t trust anyone, as if anyone would give a fuck about you when you’re nothing –

the sense memories of hands too-tight grabbing pulling and concrete hard and cold against his face –

until his battle instincts kick in and he’s able to bring his mind back to his body in the (conditional, relative) safety of his attic room. This is Makoto. She’s not an idiot, and she’s not frivolous with her words, still learning she can say more than the bare minimum she absolutely needs to. If she’s saying all this, to him of all people, then there’s something important in there.

Thankfully, Makoto has lapsed into silence again, too lost in organizing her thoughts to notice his slip. He can feel Morgana’s eyes on him, though, and makes a mental note to block out his evening for that conversation just as Makoto continues.

“When he-” she pauses once more, swallows. “When he died on the job, a few years ago, I only became more motivated to follow in his footsteps. I was… so convinced that there was some nigh-unstoppable tide of evil out in the world, that the police were gallant figures holding the line, and if I joined the police I could…”

“You wanted to help people,” Akira says quietly, filling in as Makoto trails off. Like you needed to be helped, he doesn’t continue, because maybe he’s projecting, though the resonance of his bond with her makes him think he probably isn’t.

Makoto gives a little self-deprecating scoff, turning to look at him for the first time. “I’m sure I sound like some naive idiot, don’t I? I even-” she barrels forward, frustration entering her voice, before Akira can even think to say anything in response, “- I would see stories of corrupt officers, mistreatment, false convictions, and every time I would write it off, or come up with excuses. But then I met you, and none of my excuses sat right even before I tried to blackmail you about dealing with Kaneshiro, and when his men grabbed me off the street the cops at the corner just watched as they forced me into the car and -”

The pen in Makoto’s hand snaps loudly, causing all three of them to jump as shards of plastic clatter across the table.

There is a long, frozen moment where everyone stares at her still-clenched fist and the crooked end of the pen barely kept in place by her grip. It’s broken only when Makoto lets out a loud, shuddering breath and drops the ruined remains of the pen to the table. Morgana makes a quiet noise and stands, crossing the table and sliding into her lap as Makoto presses her own hands to her face in an attempt to compose herself.

Akira gives her a minute, gathering and tossing the pen in the trash and wiping up the few stray drops of splattered ink before sitting next to her on the sofa. He leaves a little space, just in case – but it’s quickly closed, Makoto pressing her shoulder against his, Morgana’s purrs loud and soothing between them.